


Armed for the Job

by TsaritsaElena



Series: A Character Study of Bucky Barnes [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cybernetic arm, F/M, Hydra, Stealth Mission, Temporary Loss of a Limb, post-mission sex, spy mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:14:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TsaritsaElena/pseuds/TsaritsaElena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the following prompt: <em>Bucky's cybernetic arm is destroyed/lost in the middle of a mission, and now he must complete it one-armed (and/or sexytimes with Nat without the cybernetic arm).</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr, cleaned up and posted here. Chapter 2 is exclusively Bucky/Natasha porn so if you want to skip that, you absolutely can. It’s an optional ending to the main plot in Chapter One.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Canon-typical mission related violence, brief reference to past torture, temporary loss of a limb, unrealistic descriptions of grenades and grenade launchers.
> 
>  **Spoilers for:** The identity of the Winter Soldier.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** I don’t own any of these characters or copyrighted material, and I’m certainly not making any money or other material profit off of this fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended.

When he got back to SHIELD headquarters, Bucky was going to slowly torture whichever agents had furnished him with _completely faulty intel_.

The mission was supposed to be simple: two weeks ago, someone had stolen advanced weaponry from one of SHIELD’s vaults—one that was a combination of Asgardian and Chitauri technologies and augmented by SHIELD’s R&D department into a powerful, but unstable new weapon that was still in its testing phases—and it was Bucky’s job to retrieve it.

The most vulnerable time for the item would be in transit, so Bucky had staked out the parking lot of a train station in Moscow where SHIELD’s intel said that a pair of drivers would be waiting to take the package to the estate of one Pavel Yurievich Volkov, an arms dealer on the black market who had been flagged for his connections to Hydra.

His mission was to knock out the drivers and any possible security forces, steal back the package, and head to the SHIELD extraction point. Bing-bang-boom. It should have been an easy, in-and-out job.

What he hadn’t counted on, and what SHIELD’s stupid intel hadn’t told him, was that Volkov had hired an entire _squadrant_ of special forces to accompany the tech that he had stolen from SHIELD.  Bucky swore furiously as he charged into the fray, cutting down man after man as quickly as he could. Everything was going fine—well, what passed for ‘fine’ in Bucky’s book—and he could have still completed the mission, if not for the fact that the stupid security detail had _fucking grenade launchers_ and they were batshit crazy enough to use them in close quarters. On Bucky.

And that’s when two of the security guards came running out, guns blazing. One of them cornered him into a narrow space between two cars by letting off a round from a submachine gun while the other—motherfucking crazy bastard—shot at him with a grenade launcher.

The first impact missed by a wide margin of error, causing a small crater some ten feet away, but as Bucky ran to get clear of him, the guy fired again, and again, the third time finding its way close enough to blow off his cybernetic arm. The explosion rocked him on his feet and he stumbled as he tried to push himself up, finding he had only one arm to help him complete the task. Assessing his situation, Bucky counted himself lucky that nothing else was missing. The assailant fired another grenade, this time missing Bucky as he dove out of the way. He used the smoke and the confusion to make his get-away, high-tailing it out of there and back to his base of operations at a dingy motel a few miles away.

As soon as he got back, he grabbed his SHIELD communicator to report back to his handler, Sitwell.

“Agent Barnes,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “Did you acquire the target?”

Bucky clenched and unclenched his jaw, not happy to report a failure of his mission. “Negative,” he said, gritting his teeth. “There was a complication with the scheduling. I was chased down by security carrying a grenade launcher.” He paused. “My left arm is missing.”

Sitwell blew out a breath. “Did you sustain any other injuries?”

Apart from a little dirt on his face and a few cuts, he was otherwise remarkably uninjured. “Negative, that’s it.”

Silence reigned on the other end until Sitwell finally said, “Standby for further orders,” and disconnected the line.

Bucky collapsed onto the bed, the frustration and tension bleeding out of him. _Damn it_. He was angry at the timing, angry that he hadn’t done his homework well enough, angry that _SHIELD_ hadn’t done their homework well enough.

There was a huge chance Volkov would sell the weaponry, whatever it was, to Hydra, and Bucky wanted nothing more than to take them down before they got their hands on it. Hydra had done enough experimenting on him during the war that Bucky wanted payback. More than that, he knew Steve was itching to get involved in upcoming Hydra related missions. Bucky wasn’t a fan of Hydra (who was?) but Steve _hated_ them. Bucky supposed he had good reason, too. Hydra had been the reason for Dr. Erskine’s death, Hydra had been the reason he’d lost Bucky on the train, Hydra and Schmidt were the reason he downed that plane, hell, Hydra were the ones who ordered the hit on Howard Stark via “accidental” car crash in 1991. If anyone was first in line for a crack at Hydra, it was Steve. And right now, he was counting on Bucky to deliver them a blow before the next SHIELD phase of the Hydra take-down operation.

Not ten minutes after getting off the line with Sitwell, Bucky’s communicator rang again. This time when he picked up, it was Natasha.

“James,” she said, her only form of greeting.

“Natasha? I’m on a mission. Why’re you calling? Is something wrong?”

“I should be asking you that. I heard what happened tonight.”

Bucky jerked the phone away from his ear, staring at it. He had just gotten off the phone with Sitwell _ten minutes ago_. “How did you—?”

“—I have my ways,” she cut him off. “I’m in Odessa right now, won’t be finished for a couple of days, but if Coulson approves it, I can be there by Friday to try again with you.”

He was grateful for her willingness to help him out, but he couldn’t let her come. Not if these guys had _grenade_ launchers on them. The mission was too dangerous. “Thanks, Nat, but I can handle it. I’ll figure something out.”

Natasha scoffed at him. “You can handle it? How can you extract the weapon and bring it to the rendezvous point when you don’t even have your arm right now? At least let me help you knock out the guards. James, you told Sitwell yourself, they have a _grenade launcher_!”

“Which is exactly why I won’t let you come on this mission!” he shouted back at her. “I’m lucky as hell it didn’t take out any other part of me. I won’t let you get hurt too.”

He could hear Natasha sigh on the other end of the line before she swore softly, “ _Chyort voz'mi, James._ ”

“A lot of people are counting on me to keep it from falling into Hydra’s hands. You know I can’t walk away from this Nat.”

More silence. “Okay. Will you wait until tomorrow night? At least let me get you more reconnaissance intel.”

“How are you—?”

“—I have my ways.”

“Okay,” he whispered with a nod, even though she couldn’t see him. “Okay.”

“Wait for my call.” And then she hung up.

 

Natasha did indeed call a day later, accompanied on the line by her handler, Coulson, which was a little unusual but not too strange, Sitwell, to be expected, and then Tony Stark, not expected at all. “Okay, James,” she said, “Can you log in to SHIELD’s server? We’ve got _reliable_ intel for you, this time.”

Bucky was just about to ask how she knew the intel was reliable this time, but then caught himself. Ah, that must be why Stark was in on the call. Stark was one of the most annoying men Bucky knew, but he knew what he was doing when it came to the technical stuff and Bucky trusted Stark’s personal intel a hell of a lot more than anything coming out of SHIELD.

They waited while he connected to the server on his laptop, and then, “I’m in.”

“Okay, you should see a folder for this mission labeled ‘Wolf Cub.’” That was Stark’s voice. “Bring that up. This folder has everything you ever wanted to know about Volkov’s personal residence. You’ll find all the practical info you need: weapons cache in his home, personnel files of his security detail, blue prints of his home that include all the booby traps and hidden passageways—man this guy is paranoid—but we haven’t even gotten to the best part.” Stark paused, clearly waiting for Bucky to reply.

He grudgingly responded with, “Which is...?”

“Remote satellite infrared and x-ray imaging of the entire compound. It’s exactly like the all-spectrum goggles SHIELD issued to you, but I imaged the whole building!” When Bucky gave an unimpressed snort, Stark added, offended, “Hey! That’s very difficult technology to replicate from only a few satellite fly-bys. You’re lucky I’ve got JARVIS. With the blueprints, we were able to set up a near-accurate 3-D rendering of the compound.”

“And?” Bucky asked impatiently.

“What Mr. Stark is getting at,” Coulson interrupted, “is that we think we know where Volkov is hiding the weaponry. We’ve compiled a list of five hidden storage areas in order of most to least likely places he would keep it.”

“There’s bad news, isn’t there?” Bucky asked, frowning.

“We believe the most likely place he’s storing it is in his bedroom safe.”

Bucky blew out a breath. Jeeze. Talk about a mission. Immediately, he started to run through scenarios and strategies in his head, each one building off the next as he vetoed and modified his plans for getting in and out of the compound unnoticed.

“Right. Tell you what. Lemme look over the blueprints and the rest of Stark’s intel and call you in another eight hours with a plan. Might need you on standby, Stark.”

“I’ll be here,” Stark replied lightly.

“That’s fine,” said Sitwell, though Bucky wasn’t expecting a different response. Sitwell knew and trusted him well enough to give Bucky a wide degree of freedom when planning his missions. He added, “Good luck, Agent.”

Coulson echoed his sentiment and Stark just said, “Catch you later.”

After that, Bucky heard three clicks on the line. He waited a minute and then said, “Is it just you and me, Nat?”

“Just us,” she confirmed.

“So. How do you feel about helping me sift through some intel?”

“You got it,” she replied and he could hear the smile in her voice as they got down to business.

With the help of Natasha, several hours later Bucky had a detailed plan of what he would do and how he would sneak into Volkov’s compound to retrieve the stolen weaponry. He didn’t go charging into the compound just yet, though.

After sleeping through the morning, he spent the afternoon scoping out the perimeter, noting where the outside security cameras and their blind spots were. He kept a record of when the outside security guards did rotation changes. He was done with trusting any intel that came out of SHIELD and only trusted what Stark gave him on the fact that Stark was an actual genius, and mostly because Steve trusted the guy. If he was Steve-approved, that was good enough for Bucky.

Finished with his intel gathering, Bucky went back to his hide-out. He ate and slept again after it got dark, setting an alarm for the middle of the night so that he could get geared up for his break-in.

 

It was past two o’clock in the morning, and Bucky was hiding in a tree with a branch that overlooked the compound. With one hand, he carefully attached the 360° all-around multi-purpose day/night vision goggles that had a wireless connection feed to a SHIELD satellite. “Winter Soldier checking in.”

“Evening, Barnes,” Stark said from the other end of the line.

“Hey, Buck.” That was Steve’s voice, low and quiet on the other end.

If Bucky understood Natasha’s mission right, she was probably seducing intel out of a fat, corrupt official in Odessa at that very moment, so she couldn’t be on the call. Instead, Stark was helping Bucky keep tabs on the security cameras and feeds for the night, and well, Steve was there ostensibly to keep Stark in line on his first remotely-assisted stealth mission, but anyone with half a brain knew it was because he was worried about Bucky, especially since he got wind that Bucky was down an arm. If it were anyone else, Bucky would have taken it as an insult to his competence, but it was Steve. Bucky knew Steve didn't think that; in fact he rather suspected that Steve was worried and Bucky couldn't find it in him to be mad about that.

“Are you seeing this, Stark?” he asked, adjusting the goggles with his only hand while trying to maintain his balance on the tree branch. “The guards are doing their rotation change.”

“Copy that. I am seeing what you are seeing. We are a go.”

Bucky waited another fifteen minutes for the guards to settle into their positions and become less alert before heading in. “Right. Let’s get this party started.” He launched a grappling hook into the east wall of the building, zip-lining his way down to a second-floor balcony. He dropped in front of the guards who patrolled the entrance, standing in front of the elegant French doors. They weren’t standing there for long, though, and Bucky took them out easily enough, injecting each with a sedative and dragging their forms away from the door and anyone’s line of sight.

He toggled the x-ray filter on the goggles and scanned for any patrols immediately inside the building, but thankfully saw none. Expertly avoiding the security cameras by hiding in their blind spots, Bucky made his way inside.

Having memorized the layout of the compound, he took a long look down the corridor to Volkov’s bedroom and noted the two men standing guard outside. He considered his options carefully. He could try to knock the guards out and hope the commotion didn’t wake up Volkov—unlikely—or he could try to go up to the roof and around again, and enter through the window. No, that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t lower himself down because guards were stationed on the roof. Bucky frowned. He hated this; the whole place was teeming with guards and he risked detection the longer he dithered. Finally, he took out a smoke grenade and, pulling the pin with his mouth for lack of another hand, rolled it down the corridor. With only one hand, he scrambled to cover his own nose and mouth with his mask and waited until the two guards dropped like stones.

He opened the bedroom door and immediately moved out of the security cameras’ lines of sight to stand flat against the wall. He hoped no one was watching the security feeds too closely. With deadly accuracy, he pulled the trigger on his gun and hit Volkov with a sedative. He waited a good five minutes for it to fully take effect.

“Volkov’s down. You’re up, Stark. How do I re-direct the security feeds on these cameras?”

“Get in closer to the one next to you. I need to be able to see the wiring.”

Bucky approached the cameras from the side, getting closer until his face was about a foot from them.

“Okay. This is fairly simple, but don’t do anything yet. Just listen to me. See the big, thick wire in the middle?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“You’re going to disconnect it at the point where it meets the camera and immediately reconnect it to the micro-USB I gave you. It has a program that will loop the security feed from the last twenty minutes. You have to do it quickly or the camera will short out entirely and they’ll know the feed’s been tampered with. You’ve got maybe a five second window.”

“Five seconds?!” How was Bucky going to reattach it in five seconds when his arm was missing? “Okay. Okay. Fine. Just shut up over there. I gotta concentrate.” Bucky pulled out the micro-USB device that would re-loop the feeds. He held it between his thumb and forefinger and using his forefinger and his middle, disconnected the wire, maneuvering his hand to quickly jam in the micro-USB stick. He breathed a sigh of relief. “One down, two to go.”

He disabled the other two cameras, though not without some serious concentration. He glanced at his watch. Damn it. The next guard change was in ten minutes. He needed to get out of here before someone noticed all the passed out guards.

Quickly, he scanned the walls with the x-ray filter again, and noticed a square outline on the wall behind a painting. So typical.

Going over to the safe, he observed that it was electronic, with a keypad but no retinal scan. He breathed another sigh of relief. It was the first break he’d gotten all night. Hmm. He could disable it with a short EMP burst from a device in his pocket, but he worried it might trigger a hidden alert in the security system. After dusting on fingerprinting powder, he shone a black light onto the keypad. “Okay, Stark. What can you do with the numbers 1-4-6-8-0?”

He heard whirring and clicking in the background, and as he worked out that it was Volkov’s birthday, he heard Tony say, “Okay, so assuming he’s pressing the zero key twice, there are two possibilities. It’s either his birthday, October 8, 1964,” which Bucky had figured out, “Or his daughter’s birthday: June 18, 2004. JARVIS calculated the likelihood of it being his kid’s birthday with a 72% probability.”

“That’s not 100%.”

“No, but it’s the best you’ve got. Most systems allow for three tries before locking out the user. Just try the thing first.”

Responding with a grunt, Bucky pressed on the keypad in the correct order: 1-8-0-6-0-4, and hit enter. Mercifully, the safe clicked open, revealing not only the promised weaponry, but a stash of external hard drives, USB drives, micro SD cards, and more. “Steve, you gettin’ this?”

“Yeah. Can you take it with you? It might have intel we could use,” Steve replied.

“You got it. Gonna grab it along with what I came here for.” Bucky glanced at his watch again. Two minutes before the guard switch. Hurriedly, he stuffed the weapon and the storage devices into his bag and closed the safe again. He backtracked to where he came in on the balcony and launched the grappling hook up at the tree again. He used the automatic retractor on it to pull himself back up and onto the tree. In the distance, he heard a commotion from the guards outside, no doubt from finding their slumped over comrades during the switch.

It took some time and a lot of effort, but eventually Bucky climbed down the tree using one hand and his grappling hook. Taking off his mask, the goggles, and some of his gear to look more like a civilian, Bucky said, “Okay. I’m out. I’m headed back to the motel. Thanks for your help, guys.”

“No problemo,” Stark said.

“Take care of yourself, Bucky,” said Steve.

“I’ll be back in no time,” he returned, cutting out the connection.

Bucky easily ran the mile back to the dingy motel. Although he was itching to get a look at the hard drive data, there could be all sorts of viruses lurking around and he wouldn’t want to compromise the intel already on his machine. Instead, he called Sitwell right away, explaining that the mission was a success and that in addition to retrieving the weaponry, he had also picked up the data storage devices.

Sitwell congratulated him and then instructed Bucky to pack up his things and wait for his call again. Bucky dutifully followed his orders, figuring that SHIELD would pick him up soon. Sure enough, three hours later Sitwell called back with the coordinates of his pick-up location and instructed him to go to the site immediately.

When he got there, a black Quinjet was waiting for him. Bucky keyed in his authorization code to release the door, but when he got inside, he was surprised to see who was in the pilot’s seat.

“Natasha?”                                                                                                            

She smiled tightly, and while anyone else might have looked at her and seen someone who was calm and collected, Bucky could read Nat like an open book and nervousness rolled off her in waves. “I just finished up in Odessa,” she explained. “Thought you could use a hand.”

He leaned in close for a quick kiss. “I’m glad to see you,” he said, and he meant it. He sat down in the co-pilot’s chair, putting on his head set and strapping himself in.

“Stark do alright?” Natasha asked once they were at cruising altitude, the tension in her frame still there.

“Yeah. He even knew when to shut up so I could concentrate.”

“Surprising,” she deadpanned.

“I’ll say. Thanks for the help,” he added softly.

Natasha didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, she looked at him and his empty shoulder socket meaningfully. Then she returned her gaze to the clouds in front of her.

The flight up to the Helicarrier was a short one; less than half an hour, which meant that it had been stationed somewhere over Eastern Europe all along. That must mean a good number of SHIELD’s operatives were on the ground in that area.

Once they landed the Quinjet, they were debriefed by their respective handlers; Natasha by Coulson, and Bucky by Sitwell. There wasn’t much more to tell Sitwell, since he’d gone through most of it on the phone while he was in Russia. Predictably, Sitwell had written up much of it already, just asking Bucky a few questions here and there to complete his report.

Bucky waited for Natasha to get done with Coulson, which didn’t take long. Emerging from the conference room, she led Bucky in the direction of the barracks where they ended up in Bucky’s private quarters, presumably because it was a shorter walk than to hers.

Not even five seconds after she closed the door, Natasha shoved Bucky back against the wall.

Murmuring, “You stupid idiot,” she claimed his mouth, kissing him hungrily, greedy for more. They pressed themselves against each other and at this point Bucky would have encouraged Nat to jump and he would have supported the weight of both of them, but Bucky wasn’t sure he would be able to manage it with just one arm.

More than that, something was going on with Nat. That nervous energy was still present and he wanted to know why. “Tasha,” he panted between kisses, “We just got back. What’s got you so riled up?”

She eased off, but that didn’t stop her from saying harshly, “It’s bad enough they took your arm from you, but then you went back in to finish the job? And Sitwell _let you?_ What were you _thinking_? You could have been killed!”

“I’m fine, Tasha, I’m here, safe and sound,” he tried to reassure her. “You know I could do a job like this in my sleep. The lack of an arm wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say because Natasha practically growled at him, narrowing her eyes. “Do you even _remember_ what happened in Prague?”

“Prague?” Bucky was confused for a moment but then remembered. The last time they’d gone to Prague together, she’d been his protégé and he’d been captured and tortured by an enemy assailant, his arm removed to prevent him from fully fighting back as they strapped him down for rounds of mental and physical torture. Natasha, of course, had come to his aid and he’d given her a glowing report once they got back to Department X, but seeing what was in that room would have traumatized anyone.

“Tasha, no,” Bucky whispered. “It wasn’t like that.” He peppered her with kisses and grasped her shoulder with his one remaining hand, stroking her arm lightly. “I was in control the whole time. You didn’t need to worry. Please tell me you didn’t pull out of Odessa early for this.”

Natasha snorted with amusement and Bucky saw her calm down. “Please. I had all the information I needed a day ago. I was working on a secondary target who sang like a canary after a few drinks. It was child’s play.”

Bucky grinned. He wasn’t surprised to hear how easily things had gone for her, not with Natasha’s level of competency. "Come on," he said, guiding her over to the bed. Natasha settled down some more and he was glad to see the tension leave her shoulders. “You know, I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work, considering I’m down a limb.”

Fully back to her usual self, she smiled playfully and replied, “We’ll have to find out together.”


	2. Post-Mission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains purely sex and nothing else. It is not necessary to read this to understand the plot. You can skip to the next chapter if you do not wish to read the explicit sex in this chapter!

As they kissed, he tugged on the front zipper of her catsuit, running his hand over her breasts before reaching back to undo her bra strap one-handed. Intending to help Natasha out of her clothes, he tried to push the suit off her shoulders, but had difficulty doing so with only one arm.

Natasha pulled back and smiled at him, amused. “Need some help?”

He laughed gently. “Guess so.”

Natasha put on _quite_ the show for him, shimmying out of her tight mission gear with a playful smirk and a seductive glint in her eye. Getting out of her underclothes took even longer and Bucky  _ached_ to touch her by the end of it.

Piece by piece, Natasha helped him out of his mission gear. He undid the hidden clasps and buckles and wriggled out of as much of it as he could, while Natasha helped him with everything he couldn’t get. Her purposefully light, gentle touch made him shiver with pleasure. Once out of his gear, he reached behind her and placed his hand on the small of her back. He applied just enough pressure to make Natasha lean in, crushing her lips with his once more.

They kissed for some time, each plundering the other’s mouth in turn. “Lie back,” Natasha said, gently pushing him back against the pillows to emphasize her command. Her hands on his shoulders, she sat in his lap and rocked her hips forward, then back, and forward again. If Bucky was half-hard before, he was fully hard now.

“ _Oh_ ,” he moaned with closed eyes as she rolled her hips again. When he opened them, she smirked at him. Natasha knew exactly the effect she had on him, and she was teasing him. Well, okay, two could play at that.

No longer content to just kiss her lips, Bucky leaned forward, still keeping his hand on the small of her back to steady them both. He bent his head down to press a kiss to one of her breasts and then the other. Taking her right nipple in her mouth, he sucked gently at first, then harder, flicking his tongue back and forth. As he expected, Natasha moaned under his touch. Smirking, he drew back long enough for her to ask for more and then turned his attention to her other nipple, giving it the same treatment as the first, making them both pink and dark as he pulled another moan from her, loving every minute of it.

Natasha pulled back, unseating herself from his lap so that she could slowly remove his boxer briefs, the one remaining piece of clothing on either of them. She took his cock in her hand and pumped up and down, running her tongue over the tip of his slit, dripping with pre-cum.

“Harder,” he moaned, the sensation building inside of him, and Natasha obliged, pumping faster and harder while his breathing became shallower and shallower. Natasha was paying attention too, because she eased off, slowly releasing his cock from her hand. She shifted on the bed and leaned over him to get to the bedside table, pulling out the drawer for the bottle of lube and a condom.

Sometimes Bucky put it on, sometimes Natasha did, but with only one hand, Natasha would have to be the one to do it this time. Pinching the tip with one hand, she rolled the condom over his cock with the other, taking her time to slowly run her hand up from the tip to the base of his cock.

Bucky loved to stretch Natasha open, to slip his fingers inside her, adding another and then another, feeling the muscles slowly stretch to accommodate him. With only one arm, he needed help with his balance to do it. “Wanna stretch you open for me. Help me out with that?”

“Of course,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips, even as she shifted to accommodate him. She lay on top of him, his cock between them, as he ran one hand down her backside, tracing his hand along her ass and then moving toward her clit. He pressed two fingers into her slit, working his way in slowly, moving in and out. Adding another finger, he felt her push back onto his hand, making it easier for him to slip his fingers in and out. He added one more for good measure, and it was worth it to hear another moan coming from her as he pushed in and out.

“Want you in me, James, _please_ ,” she moaned.

“Yes, yes, want that, too... gotta help me out, Nat,” he said breathlessly, leaning in to kiss her.

She sat back up and so did he, sliding backwards so that he rested on the pillows behind him. Natasha positioned herself on top of him, taking his cock in her hand once more as she sank down on it. And then she began to move, rocking her hips back and forth, riding him, controlling the pace and doing most of the work for him, which he didn’t mind. It made things much easier, since he didn’t have to concentrate as much on keeping both of them balanced.

Natasha’s breathing grew shallower while he moaned beneath her, urging Natasha to go faster, harder. She obliged him, the friction hot and delicious between them. “ _Oh_ , Nat, yes! Please, more, just like that—” he broke off with a choked sound, his heart rate up and his breathing shallow as he came with pleasure. Natasha rode him through it, her own climax coming not long after. She collapsed on top of him and they lay there together, panting hard as they caught their breaths.

Several minutes later they untangled their limbs, Natasha peeling off the condom for him and disposing of it as he thanked her.

“That wasn’t so hard, one handed,” she remarked, giving him a quick kiss as she lay back down next to him. Bucky hmmed happily, pleased that she’d enjoyed herself as much as he had. “Wonder what else we can get up to before Stark fits you with another arm.”

Bucky pulled her in close, sneaking in another kiss. “Guess we’ll have to find out.”


	3. The Following Day (Outtake)

In the morning, SHIELD put Bucky and Natasha on another Quinjet flight. This time it was piloted by another agent so that they could take it easy on the flight back to New York. The day was mostly lost in transit and it was nighttime again when the Quinjet landed on the roof of Stark Tower.

After a quick dinner together in their apartment, Bucky and Natasha fell into their bed, exhausted.

It was mid-morning when Bucky woke up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. As Natasha walked past, he saw that she was already awake, showered, and dressed.

She bent down to give him a kiss as he sat up in bed, explaining, “I’m heading out to spar with Clint for a few hours. Tony wants you to go to his workshop as soon as you can, so that he can fit you for your new cybernetic arm. Try not to put it off.” Natasha knew how much he hated when Tony tinkered with his arm. It was like all the man saw was a shiny new toy to play with, instead of remembering that Bucky could _feel_ those neural connections, thanks.

He mumbled something that sounded like agreement and nodded his head. “Okay. Later.”

Bucky took a few more minutes to savor the warmth of his covers before getting up. He showered and dressed, and even made himself some eggs and a bagel. He was just about finished when he heard a knock on the door. “Come in!” he hollered, leaning back in his chair to get a good view of who it was. “Steve!”

“Hey. Heard you got in late last night,” Steve said, not-so-subtly eyeing the empty socket on his left arm. “How’d it go?”

“Good. I’m sure SHIELD is glad to have their shiny weapon back. I bet they're decoding the info as we speak.”

Steve continued to stare at him impassively; really, a hitch in his plans like a missing arm wasn’t going to keep Bucky from completing a mission, but they both knew that’s not what Steve meant. Steve cared about him; that’s just who he was, and Bucky wouldn’t want him any other way.

For Steve’s sake, Bucky mumbled something that sounded like, “’m fine, Steve. Made it out the second time without a scratch on me. Quit worryin’.” Steve frowned but said nothing else. Bucky went on, “So, Natasha send you here to make sure I see Stark?”

Steve laughed. “You know she did. If it was up to you, you’d go a week before willingly entering his workshop.”

Bucky scowled. “Yeah, well, if he didn’t come after me with a screwdriver every time I got down there, maybe I’d feel differently.”

“He’s... enthusiastic about the technology, that’s all. He’s tryin' to improve it for you.”

“Try sayin’ that when you’re on the receiving end of his machinations,” Bucky groused, but got up from his seat anyway, depositing his plate in the sink and getting ready to leave.

“Believe me, I know. I can’t tell you how many times he’s made upgrades on the suit, and how many times he’s _tried_ to make upgrades on the shield. I have to hide it from him these days.” He shook his head with a fond exasperation.

“Well, guess I should get this over with,” Bucky said, heading for the door. “Come on.”

 

They made their way down to Tony’s lab where he was seated at a bench, fitting wires coming from a metal arm to an electronic circuit board. He only looked up when Steve and Bucky walked in.

“Good timing,” he said. “As soon as I heard about your arm, I got working on a replacement. But I’m making upgrades to it, and I need to hook you up for testing.”

“What kind of testing?” Bucky asked warily.

“Well, when your arm, ah—when it got blown off, am I correct in saying that you felt it? You felt like your _actual_ arm was coming off?”

Bucky winced, recalling the memory of the pain, and the phantom neural signals that put him in agony for the first hour afterwards. “Yeah, I felt it.”

“I’m working on a circuit that will act as an overload switch. It’ll fit right there,” he pointed to Bucky’s empty socket, “along the shoulder line. The overload switch is designed to block any neural signals that go above a certain voltage. It means that if any unmanageable levels of pain—like the kind that might take an arm off—hit the circuit, it will block the signal from going to your brain. You won’t feel it. Even better than a real arm! How’s that for an improvement?”

Bucky had to admit, he was impressed. It would certainly aid him in a fight; he’d be able to go well above and beyond any pain tolerances with the arm than he ever had before. He hoped it would help with the pain associated with arm upgrades, too. “Does this mean it won’t hurt to re-attach a new arm anymore?”

“Yep! You got it,” Tony replied, fixing a stray connection he noticed out of the corner of his eye. “Let’s get you hooked up for testing.”

Bucky was led to the kind of chair that looked like it belonged in a doctor’s office, and hooked up to a whole host of devices to measure electrical impulses and voltage outputs from different sensory points. A lot of it reminded him of the painful testing they’d done on him in the Red Room, and his heart rate started to rise while his breathing became shallower.

Sensing his distress, Steve sat next to him, distracting him with stories about Clint’s latest antics or shared memories he recalled from their time growing up. It helped, and Bucky tried to keep his focus on Steve, turning his head away from whatever Tony poked and prodded at. Tony didn’t do anything that really hurt. It was just the whole concept of being hooked up like a rat in the lab of a mad scientist that kinda got to him.

Fortunately, Tony didn’t need that long to get all of the test results he needed, and only twenty minutes later, Bucky was free to go.

“I’ll have the finished model for you by this time tomorrow,” Tony told him. “It’ll take ten minutes tops—one to insert the arm, pain free, and another nine to run through the standard tests. You’ve gone through all of them before. No new surprises.”

Bucky nodded tersely, before heading out with Steve. “Wanna let some steam off in the gym?” Steve offered. Looking down at his right hand, Bucky found that he was trembling. A bead of sweat rolled down his face, dripping off his nose. Damn. He was more worked up than he thought he was. When he didn’t answer, Steve added, “I’ll even go easy on you.”

Bucky snorted in return. “Please, I can still take you, even one handed.”

Steve grinned back, deliberately ignoring Bucky’s anxiety, for which Bucky was grateful. As they entered the elevator and pressed the button for the gym level, Steve added playfully, “We’ll see about that.”

Was that so? He’d completed an entire mission one handed; a round of sparring with a Super Soldier shouldn’t be so difficult. Riding the elevator up, Bucky smiled to himself and decided he was going to enjoy proving Steve wrong.

_Fin._


End file.
